


Step and Dress Alike Express

by Allekha



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Ballet, Gen, Pre-Canon, Relationship Study, Shopping, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 05:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13675668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allekha/pseuds/Allekha
Summary: Lilia and Victor share an understanding of beauty and dedication, so she enjoys taking him out, teaching him, and dressing him up for the ballet.





	Step and Dress Alike Express

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lileura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lileura/gifts).



They're in China for a competition, and after all the skating is finished, Lilia takes Victor out. It's neither a consolation nor a congratulation for his silver medal – which he'd been all smiles about for the crowd and the pictures, and privately started scowling about when they were in private. He has that same ruthless perfectionism that she does, and just as she was never satisfied until she was dancing the roles she wanted, he is never happy unless everything is shining and flawless for his audience.

That means there are days when she and Yakov have to practically drag him home. But it also makes him a wonderful student. Like his determination to have everything his way, it has its good and its bad points.

There is no more ice time for him now, not until they return and he can go back to practice, so Lilia takes him out. Partially to get his mind off the competition, so he doesn't keep bugging them about improvements the whole way home, but mostly because of something else they share: they both like pretty things. Their senses of aesthetics aren't always quite the same, but they're close enough.

Here there are pretty things enough for both of them – folding fans and hair pins and ink paintings. They look and look and don't buy anything, though Victor sometimes lingers and makes the sellers pay attention.

And then they find the silk shop.

Lilia stops to look at the scarves. She doesn't need any scarves – certainly she doesn't need silk ones, when she has perfectly nice ones back home that are warmer than these ones, and she doesn't wear them often anyway. But the texture of the silk is exquisite, the fabric sliding between her fingers like water, and she finds herself tempted by a lovely black one with tiny little pink and purple flowers embroidered by the ends.

When she finally looks up, Victor is buried somewhere among the crowded racks of shirts. Of course he is; they seem to come in even more colors than the scarves, and they're nice shirts, with detailing like pin tucks down the front. She steps away from the scarves and goes to see what's caught his interest.

"Lilia!" On seeing her, Victor waves the shirt he's holding and nearly hits the poor salesgirl who's trying to help in the face. "Isn't this a pretty color?"

It is, a lovely red-purple that would suit him very well. "Be careful with that," she says.

"Oh." He smiles at the shop girl and says something that sounds like it came out of phrase book. An attempt at an apology, she hopes. "I think she's been trying to tell me that it's too small?"

"Given that it has bust darts, it almost certainly is." Everything here seems to be sized for smaller people than in Russia, and as slender as Victor is, he's not likely to fit into a shirt made for an average Chinese girl.

"I didn't even notice." He frowns at the shirt, and then looks up at the shop girl again. Smiles. Hands her the shirt. She gives him a tiny smile in return, and leads him to another rack.

Lilia lets him have his fun picking through the clothes, giving opinions as she's asked for them and trying to figure out if the store has a black blouse in a size that will fit her. They do, and Victor eventually decides on another purple shirt, darker than the other one, and one in a blue that's almost too bright for him.

The salesgirl carefully folds everything up for them. Lilia puts down money for all three shirts before Victor can find his wallet. "You don't have to," he starts to say, but when she glances at him, he goes quiet before breaking into a wide grin. "Lilia, you're the _best_. Thank you! I can't wait to wear them." He looks like he wants to hug her; she appreciates his restraint.

She does like pretty things, and Victor, especially when he is all dressed up, is very pretty.

~!~

Victor comes to the side of the rink, a twist to his mouth. He doesn't need her to tell him that his run-through was lacking, even if he landed his jumps cleanly. He's been off-beat today, probably not helped by a strained wrist.

She hands him a water bottle and gives him a moment to rest and collect his own thoughts and let go of some of the frustration. She remembers what it was like, those days when her body didn't move quite as she wanted it to, how she had to learn how to work her way through it because she still had to give performances, no matter how she felt. She danced through colds and injuries and days where she simply felt tired and muzzy, and she had to do it such that the audience could never tell the difference.

Yakov is gentler with Victor when it comes to injuries and illness. A competition is one thing, but practice is another. The part of Lilia that still sounds like her teachers doesn't want to give Victor any slack; the part of her that wants Victor to skate as long as he can grudgingly listens to him on this subject. Besides, it wouldn't do for Victor to hear contradictory words from them when it comes to what training he can do. He likes to downplay his injuries as it is if he thinks it will get him more time on the ice.

After he sets the water back down on the boards, she can still _see_ him chewing on the program in his mind. It's been a long day, and he is young, so maybe a moment of distraction would be more helpful than simply telling him to move past it. "Vitya," says Lilia, "we were thinking of going to the ballet after returning from Nationals. Would you like to come with us?"

He perks right up. "Can I? What are you seeing?"

" _Swan Lake_." He brightens further at that; he likes _Swan Lake_. "The next time Nationals are in Moscow, we should take you to a Bolshoi performance," she muses. The Mariinsky Ballet is beautiful, of course, but she prefers the bolder approach of her old company.

"I'd love that." Victor looks like he's completely forgotten his disappointment; his shoulders are relaxed and he has a smile on his face. Good.

They talk about his run-through for a few minutes, and then he pesters her about doing it again. She glances towards Yakov, who is currently correcting another student's jump technique, and asks, "Would he let you run through it again today?"

Victor gives her an innocent look; when it has no effect on her, he offers, "Even if I marked the jumps?"

"Only your step sequence," she decides. It's what he's been shakiest on today. She's not an expert when it comes to skating, but she can tell that the edges on his steps were too shallow, his knees too stiff, and she's already lectured him on letting his hands droop all over the place.

He does much better this time around. It's like his energy has come back, and his movements are easy and relaxed as he hops and skips across the ice, his smile no longer forced but natural and cute. That's more like it. Whether or not he medals at Nationals, she's sure he'll be the loveliest of the men.

"What do you think?" Victor asks afterward, and she makes him get off the ice so she can correct his arms again by hand.

~!~

"Lilia," Victor says, poking his head into the room and drawing out the sounds of her name. "What should I wear?"

Doubtless Victor could decide on his own if she made him, but if he wants her to dress him up – well, Lilia enjoys it, too. He waits quietly on his bed, petting a sleepy Makkachin while she picks through his closet. She doesn't really understand his day-to-day clothes – maybe it's modern fashion or maybe it's just that Victor likes sparkles on everything, not only on his skating costumes – but his formal attire is much better.

Black pants, the blue silk shirt from China, everything hung neatly and ironed smooth. She picks out a couple of other things while he gets dressed, and he puts out his narrow wrist for her to fold his watch onto it. Black on the bottom for Odile, silver on top for Odette, and the blue in-between like a shining jewel of a lake; it's a good start. "Sit down," she says, and he sits, back straight and legs together, at his desk.

She picks up the hair brush and starts to pull apart his braid. It's a mess – he likes to leave the strands a little loose, and between that and the way that he's been running around all day, it seems to her that there are more escaped hairs than ones still in the braid. First, she has to brush it all down until it's acceptable again, back to its natural level of frizziness and still a little wavy from the braid.

Usually, when he wants to look nice, he simply leaves his hair down. It attracts enough attention. But if they're going to all the effort of dressing him up for the theater, she might as well do something fancier than that. So she parts the top from the bottom and braids back from the front until she's created a crown above the loose strands below, then pins the ends so they won't show. There. Pretty braids _and_ he still has some of his hair down.

Victor smiles up at her. The overall effect is enchanting. He looks like he could step right out onto the rink like this and deliver an untouchable performance that nobody would be able to look away from. Not just because of his pretty hair, which he exclaims over when he sees it in the mirror, but because he understands, as she does, that beauty is not derived from the luck of being born with a good appearance. What it is is work; beautiful movements, beautiful speech, and beautiful determination are all the roots of strength and power, and this is why Victor excels.

She goes off to get dressed herself, silk and long skirts and hair pulled back into a picture-perfect bun. Yakov helps her get a necklace around her neck and settles it gently on her skin. They emerge to find Victor already in his coat, giving Makkachin a long good-bye and saying nonsense to her, something that always makes his eyes shine with affection.

Once they arrive at the theater, Lilia stops to talk with some friends and acquaintances, and more than one person whom she doesn't know but who recognizes her. She keeps Victor with her for a while, unable to resist showing him off. "This is my student," she always starts. Yakov's student first, but still hers, and never mind that he will never see a stage.

Victor fidgets endlessly in his seat when they sit down, even after Lilia tells him twice to settle down. This is why Yakov always sits between them – he doesn't seem to mind Victor fiddling with his hair and adjusting his legs every minute or two. At least he goes still as soon as the curtain rises, and she is able to forget about him as the dancers come into view.

All of that energy explodes out of him again afterward; he's almost dancing himself as they leave the theater, enthusing so much about the performance that she and Yakov can hardly get a word in. "Lilia," he says, breathless, twisting on the pavement to look back at them, "would you choreograph a _Swan Lake_ program for me next season?"

"Of course," she says.

"Thank you!" He doesn't hug her, but he does pretty much launch himself at Yakov, who has to let go of her hand in order to shove him into a position that still lets him walk. Yakov sighs with annoyance, but she can see the fondness in his expression. "I'm going to have the best _Swan Lake_ program ever," Victor declares.

And he will, with the help of her choreography and Yakov's teaching, because he knows how to use them properly, and the ice as his stage will bring out the best of him.


End file.
